Peer review prevents the academy from being hijacked by people-pleasers who say what a certain constituent wants to hear, untroubled by facts and other such nuisances. Please do propose an alternative. Perhaps you prefer the media’s approach, which is to always allow someone to represent ‘the other side’, even if the other side is one person with a mental illness. Peer review may at times lead to it being difficult for someone to challenge the status quo. But in academia, the consensus is reached by careful investigation, and so overturning a generally accepted theory SHOULD be difficult. That it happens constantly anyway just shows that the system works, forcing creativity to go hand in hand with careful research and documentation.